Playing with a bow (NOT Ebow)

[Jejouelesguitares]

I found an old bow of a friend of mines and he let me use it, I rosined it up and everytihng and I've been working on the stuff a little. But have any of you ever tried this weird thing? If so, lend me some tips PLEASE!

[caprile]

it's not so new....jimmy page did it a lot. (altough personally i don't feel he did anything interesting with it)

(i repeat: personally, imho, just my view blah, blah)

[darren wilson]

Bowed instruments have very curved fingerboards, and the strings are very high off the body, making it much easier to strike individual strings with a bow. Accomplishing the same effect on anything but the high and low E strings on a guitar is nearly impossible, unless you're using the bow to drive all six strings.

It might be fun to play with, but i don't see it being much more than a way to generate some very nasty sounding scrapes and squeals. Besides, if you pull it out on stage, everyone will roll their eyes and mumble "Page ripoff" under their breath.

[Kremlin]

It's also REALLY hard to get a decent sound out of a metal string with a rosin bow. I've tried it a few times before, a friend of mine is a cellist.

[Superuser]

you guys might be interested to click here and check out Sigur Ros.

They are an Icelandic band, the guitarist uses a bow and gets beautiful sounds out of it... not just squeeks and squeels.. lol

I don't think they are yelling Page ripoff here...

That's quite close-minded, IMHO!

http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/

enjoy

Robbie

[Lonely Raven]

Back in HighSchool I messed with a bow on my guitar...I think it was my
Donnie even.

After about two weeks of playing around, I could get more then Page
was doing out of it, but without a major radius on the strings (as pointed
out above), it's really hard to get anything besides half assed cords or
just the Fat E string.

5 mins with an E-bow and I was blowing away my two weeks with a
Violin bow.

After talking with some Violin players (at the time) I figured it was a lot
to do with the string material, and/or the hairs on the bow. The way the
bow works is to rub and resonate the string. Like rubbing your finger
around a crystal glass of wine. The bow I used (horse hair I think it was)
just didn't jibe with the nickle plated strings I was using.

Now in reverse, when I sat down and played Violin for the very first time
in my life (in trying to figure out why I couldn't get the bow to work on
guitar) I had 90% of the basics of using the bow down pat, and really
blew my friends away. Course, the lack of frets and a low slung strap
was kind of a hindrence to me, LOL.

I think the key is really getting the bow to resonate on the string, without
skipping or binding. Again, think of running your finger around a glass
of wine to make it sing. Same thing. It needs the right texture to
resonate.

Maybe replace the bow hair with a large rubber band? Or maybe cloth?
Hell, maybe even old guitar strings would work best. Assuming you dont
saw ridges in your fret board! LOL

I hope this helps out some. I really wanted to do this when I was younger
and more excited about pushing the boundries of whats there and whats
been done. Now, to check out that band above and see what THAT sounds
like!

[pawel]

You have to remember that Page had his Les Pauls customised so that the neck radius was suitable for the bow, I don't know if it works with flatter radius guitars (never tried the bow thing myself)...

[Two hands31]

Originally Posted by darren wilson

Bowed instruments have very curved fingerboards, and the strings are very high off the body, making it much easier to strike individual strings with a bow. Accomplishing the same effect on anything but the high and low E strings on a guitar is nearly impossible, unless you're using the bow to drive all six strings.

Check out "Save Me" by The Tea Party. Jimmy Page was an influence on Jeff Martin, but later asked advice on how to achieve this very thing.

[Kremlin]

That reminds me; you'll get WAY better sounds out of a guitar with a bow if you use flatwound or ribbonwound strings because of their texture. They're smoother and have more surface area in contact with the bow.